Managing some explosive reveals

'The Night Manager' returns after 10 years with emotions ablaze.

- EMILY ZEMLER

TOM Hiddleston stars as spy Jonathan Pine in Season 2 of “The Night Manager.”

This article contains spoilers for the first three episodes of "The Night Manager" Season 2.

It wasn’t inevitable that “The Night Manager,” an adaptation of John le Carré’s 1993 spy novel, would have a sequel. Le Carré didn’t write one and the six-episode series, which aired in 2016, had a definitive ending.

But after the show's debut, fans clambered for more. They loved Tom Hiddleston’s brooding, charismatic Jonathan Pine, a hotel manager wrangled into the spy game by British intelligence officer Angela Burr (Olivia Colman). And at the heart of the series was the parasitic dynamic between Pine and his delightfully malicious foe, an arms dealer named Richard Onslow Roper (Hugh Laurie).

The show was so good that even the story's author wanted it to continue. After the premiere of Season 1 at the Berlin International Film Festival, Le Carré sat across from Hiddleston, a twinkle in his eye, and said, "Perhaps there should be some more." "That was the first I'd heard of it or thought about it," Hiddleston says, speaking over Zoom alongside the show's director, Georgi Banks-Davies, from New York a few days before the U.S. premiere of "The Night Manager" Season 2 on Prime Video, which arrived Sunday with three episodes, 10 years after the first season. "But it was so extraordinary and inspiring to come from the man himself. That's when I knew there might be an opportunity." Time passed because no one wanted a sequel of less quality. Le Carré died in 2020, leaving his creative works in the care of his sons, who helm the production company the Ink Factory.

That same year, screenwriter David Farr, who had penned the first series, had a vision.